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The Duties of Americans 
in the Present War 



ADDRESS DELIVERED AT TREMONT TEMPLE 
SUNDAY, JANUARY 30, 1916 



BY 

JOSIAH ROYCE, LL.D. 

PROFESSOR IN 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 



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THE DUTIES OF AMERICANS IN THE 
PRESENT WAR 

BY 

JOSIAH ROYCE, LL.D. 

PROFESSOR IN 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

I fully agree with those who believe that men can reason- 
ably define their rights only in terms of their duties. I have 
moral rights only in so far as I also have duties. I have a right 
to my life because it gives me my sole opportunity to do my 
duty. I have a right to happiness solely because a certain 
measure of happiness is needed to adapt me to do the work of 
a man. I have a right to possess some opportunity to fulfil the 
office of a man ; that is, I have a right to get some chance to 
do my duty. This is, in fact, my sole inalienable right. 

This doctrine that rights and duties are correlative is an old 
teaching. It is also a dry and somewhat abstractly worded bit 
of wisdom, unwelcome to our more flippant as well as to our 
more vehement moods, and of late unpopular. I am not here 
to expound it. I mention it only because I rejoice that we 
are here to-day to consider what we have deliberately chosen 
to name the duties of Americans in the present war. I doubt 
not that we Americans have also our rights in the world crisis 
through which we are passing. I was glad and eager to sign 
the recent memorial, addressed to the President of the United 
States, and issued by the "Committee on American Rights." 
But I signed that memorial with enthusiasm just because I be- 
lieve not only that the American rights in question are genuine, 
but that they correspond with our duties as Americans, and with 
the duty which our country now owes to mankind. It is of 
our duties that I now rejoice to speak to you. 

Two things have made clear to many of us Americans since 
the outset of the present war — and to some of us with a con- 



Glfl 

Author 



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stantly increasing definiteness of vision — what our duty is. 
First the fact that, in this war, there is constantly before our 
eyes the painfully tragic and sublime vision of one nation that, 
through all its undeserved and seemingly overwhelming agonies, 
has remained unmistakably true to its duty — that is, to its in- 
ternational duty, to its honor, to its treaties, to the cause, to 
the freedom, and to the future union of mankind. That nation 
is Belgium. 

In the heart of every true American this consciousness ought 
therefore to be kept awake (and, in many of our minds this con- 
sciousness is glowingly and radiantly active and wakeful), — the 
desire, the longing, the resolution : "Let us, let our dear republic, 
do our duty as Belgium and the Belgian people have done theirs. 
Let us, with all our might, with whatever moral influence we pos- 
sess, with our own honor, with our lives if necessary, be ready, 
if ever and whenever the call comes to our people, to sacrifice 
for mankind as Belgium has sacrificed, to hazard all as Bel- 
gium has hazarded all, for the truer union of mankind and for 
the future of human brotherhood." That vision of Belgium's 
noble and unsparing self-sacrifice for international honor is one 
of the two things that to-day constantly remind us of what in- 
ternational duty is, and so what our own American duty is. 

The second thing which constantly keeps wide awake, in the 
minds of many of us here in America, the knowledge of what 
our duty is, is the moral attitude which has been deliberately 
and openly assumed by Germany since the outset of the war. 
This attitude gives us what will remain until the end of human 
history, one great classic example of the rejection, by a great 
and highly intelligent nation, of the first principles of inter- 
national morality, — the rejection of international duty, the as- 
sertion that for its own subjects, the State is the supreme moral 
authority, and that there is no moral authority on earth which 
ranks superior to the will of the State. 

The assertion has often been made that we Americans have 
believed the lies of Germany's enemies, and have thus been 
ignorantly and woefully deceived. Countless German attempts 
have been made to tell us through books, pictures, newspapers, — 



sometimes through other documents, — what Germany's real 
motives are. I am sure that I speak the minds of many of you, 
my countrymen and fellow citizens, when I say that, next to the 
vision of bleeding and devoted Belgium, — that suffering servant 
of the great community of mankind, — no picture more convinc- 
ingly instructs us regarding our duty, than the picture that comes 
before our minds whenever we remember Germany's summons 
at the gates of Liege, or recall von Jagow's answer to one of 
President Wilson's early Lusitania notes, or when, more recently, 
we read the first Austrian note in answer to President Wilson's 
peremptory demand about the case of the Ancona. 

No, not Germany's enemies, but Germany herself, her prince, 
her ministers, her submarine commanders, have given us our 
principal picture of what the militant Germany of the moment 
is, and of what Germany means for the future of international 
morality. This picture constitutes the second of the two great 
sources of our instruction about what our American duty in this 
war is. 

We are all accustomed to "look on this picture, and then on 
this." The first of the two pictures is now familiar, — inexpres- 
sibly sad and dear to us. Belgians are amongst us as friends or 
as colleagues ; Belgian relief is one of the principal good causes 
of American charity. Belgian wrongs, — but also Belgian heroism 
and Belgian unswerving dutifulness, — are before our eyes as in- 
spiring admonitions of what is the duty of Americans in the present 
war. That constitutes the one picture. The other, — well, Ger- 
many has chosen to set before us this second picture. That, in its 
turn, has now become too familiar. But since our memory for 
diplomatic notes easily and early begins to fail, that second 
picture often tends to fade out amongst us. And since we all 
long for peace to come, and since some faint hearts forget that 
it is as immoral to make light of grave wrongs, and merely 
to condone them, as it is irrationally to cry out with lust of 
vengeance, — since these things are so, there are Americans who 
forget the second picture, and forget that Germany has done 
as much as Belgium to set before us what our international 
duty, as individuals and as a nation, really is. 



What that second picture means, what spirit it expresses, 
what view of the nature of each nation's obligations to mankind 
it sets before us, we have not been left to learn from the enemies 
of Germany. The chief ally of Germany, whose submarine 
policy was "made in Germany," and whose will in this matter 
is the will of Germany, lately explained the matter to us in 
unmistakable terms. I refer to the Ancona case. President 
Wilson accepting, not any so-called "lies" of the enemies of 
Germany, but the official statement of the submarine commander 
who sank the Ancona after that vessel had ceased to make her 
effort to escape, and while her passengers were still in danger 
of drowning in case their vessel was sunk, — President Wilson 
addressed to Austria a note in which he plainly and accurately 
said that the officially reported act of the submarine commander 
was in principle barbarous and abhorrent to all civilized nations. 
Austria in its reply very courteously, ironically, and cynically 
thanked our Government for the "esteemed favor" of its com- 
munication, and expressed its entire ignorance of what law, of 
what principle of international morality, there might be which 
the submarine commander was supposed, by the American 
Government, to have violated. 

Now this Austrian reply, — widely praised by the inspired 
German press as a masterpiece of diplomatic skill, and received 
with "quiet joy" by the official lovers and defenders of the Ger- 
man submarine policy, — was precisely in the spirit of Cain's 
reply when he was challenged from overhead regarding the 
results of his late unpleasantness with his brother Abel. For 
Cain, while his brother's blood was crying from the ground, 
received a somewhat stern diplomatic communication from a 
moral power, demanding: "Where is thy brother?" And Cain in 
substance begged to acknowledge the esteemed favor of this 
communication from on high, and seems at first to have taken 
a certain stilles Vergnugen in begging to represent first that, so 
far as he knew, he was not his brother's keeper, while, for the 
rest, he desired most respectfully, and in the friendliest spirit, 
to inquire what law of God or man he was supposed to have 
broken. 



Now this is the spirit of international immorality, — this is 
the sort of enmity to mankind, — which the German submarine 
policy, its official allies and defenders, have expressed and jus- 
tified. Upon this second picture then, with its lurid contrast to 
the picture of Belgium, we have to look when we think of our 
duty as Americans. For deliberate national deeds cannot be un- 
done, nor can their official justifications be lightly condoned by 
reason of later diplomatic trifling and by reason of speciously 
well-written notes of apology and withdrawal. The deed stays. 
Its official justification reveals motives, and confesses a national 
spirit, whose moral meaning is as irrevocable as death. We 
Americans know what the Lusitania outrage meant, and to what 
spirit it gave expression. That spirit has the "primal eldest 
curse upon it, — a brother's murder." For the young men, the 
women, the babies, who went down with the Lusitania were our 
dead. At least I know — some of whose pupils were amongst 
the victims of the Lusitania — that they were my dead. And 
the mark of Cain lasts while Cain lives. 

Such facts determine the duty of Americans in this war. Our 
duty is to be and to remain the outspoken moral opponents of 
the present German policy, and of the German state, so long 
as it holds this present policy, and carries on its present war. 
In the service of mankind, we owe an unswerving sympathy not 
to one or another, but to all of the present allied enemies of 
Germany. We owe to those allies whatever moral support and 
whatever financial assistance it is in the power of this nation to 
give. As to munitions of war: it is not merely a so-called 
American right that our munition-makers should be free to sell 
their wares to the enemies of Germany. It is our duty to en- 
courage them to do so, since we are not at the moment in a posi- 
tion to serve mankind by more direct and effective means. For 
the violation of Belgium, and the submarine policy of Germany 
and of her ally — a policy deliberately and boastfully avowed 
as long as the central powers deemed such avowal advantageous 
— this violation and this policy together suffice to keep clearly 
before our eyes the fact that Germany, as at present disposed, 
is the wilful and deliberate enemy of the human race. It is 



open to any man to be a pro-German who shares this enmity. 
But with these two pictures before our eyes, it is as impossible 
for any reasonable man to be in his heart and mind neutral, 
as it was for the good cherubs in heaven to remain neutral when 
they first looked out from their rosy glowing clouds, and saw 
the angels fall. Neutral, in heart or in mind, the dutiful Ameri- 
can, when once he has carefully looked upon this picture and 
then on this, will not and cannot be. He must take sides. And 
if he takes sides as I do, he will say: "Let us do all that we as 
Americans can do, to express our hearty, and, so far as we 
can, our effective sympathy with the united friends of Belgium, 
who are the foes of those German enemies of mankind. 
Whenever the war is over, if it ends in the defeat and conse- 
quent moral reform of Germany, then in due time let Charity 
have its perfect work. For we in America have long loved and 
studied German civilization, and would be loving it still but for 
its recent crimes. But now, while the war lasts, and Belgium 
bleeds, and mankind mourns, let us aid the allied enemies of 
Germany with sympathy, since the cause of the allied enemies of 
Germany is the cause of mankind; let us enthusiastically ap- 
prove of supplying the enemies of Germany with financial aid 
and with munitions of war, let us resist with all our moral 
strength and influence those who would place an embargo upon 
munitions, let us bear patiently and uncomplainingly the transient 
restrictions of our commerce which the war entails, let us be 
ashamed of ourselves that we cannot even now stand beside 
Belgium, and suffer with her for our duty and for mankind, and 
while we wait for peace let us do what we can to lift up the 
hearts that the Germany of to-day has wantonly chosen to 
wound, to betray, and to make desolate. Let us do what we can 
to bring about at least a rupture of all diplomatic relations be- 
tween our own republic and those foes of mankind, and let us 
fearlessly await whatever dangers this our duty as Americans 
may entail upon us, upon our land and upon our posterity. We 
shall not thus escape suffering. But we shall begin to endure 
as Belgium to-day endures, for honor, for duty, for mankind." 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

■■ill 



020 914 123 1 * 
CITIZENS' LEAGUE FOR AMERICA AND THE ALLIES 



We believe that the fabric of civilization embodied in 
free government and diversity of nationality is menaced by 
Teutonic aggression, and that the foundations of public right 
are endangered by the violation of Belgium and the atrocities 
of submarine warfare. 

We are convinced that our political ideals and our national 
safety are bound up with the cause of the Allies, and that their 
defeat would mean moral and material disaster to our country. 

Therefore, this League is formed to use all lawful means 
to put this Nation in a position of definite sympathy with the 
Allies, and in an equally definite position of moral disappro- 
bation of the purposes and methods of the Central Teutonic 
Empires. 



COMMITTEE 



Holker Abbott 

Rev. W. H. van Allen, D. D. 

Wm. D. Austin 

Gaspar G. Bacon 

Philip Cabot 

Richard C. Cabot, M. D. 

Stephen Chase 

Wm. T. Councilman, M. D. 

Ralph Adams Cram 

Rev. H. R. Deming 

James V. Donnaruma 

Rev. P. R. Frothingham 

Henry Copley Greene 

Wm. Ernest Hocking 

Charles C. Jackson 



F. F. McLeod 
Joseph B. Millet 
Ralph Barton Perry 
Arthur Stan wood Pier 
Edgar Pierce 
Chandler R. Post 
Morton Prince, M. D. 
George Haven Putnam 
Josiah Royce 
Alexander Sedgwick 
Frederick C. Shattuck, M. D. 
Wm. Roscoe Thayer 
George B. Upham 
H. Langford Warren 
Leo Wiener 



Extra copies of this pamphlet may be obtained at the rate of five cents 
each, or two dollars a hundred, on application to 

WILLIAM D. AUSTIN 

50 Bromfield Street, Boston, Mass. 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS^ 

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020 914 123 1 



